“We will recover these positions,” Norris was told by his race engineer. Meanwhile, as Lap 9 ticked down, a thrilling duel was playing out between Sainz and Hamilton – the man who replaced him at Ferrari – over P8, the seven-time World Champion eventually muscling by before Tsunoda followed suit to push a struggling Sainz down to P10.

Norris headed into the pits on Lap 11 – where he also served his penalty, dropping him down to P14 after bolting on the medium tyres – while Gasly and Verstappen also made their stops for the medium and hard rubber respectively. Verstappen suffered a particularly slow stop, the World Champion emerging in P16.

Up at the front, Piastri remained in the lead by six seconds from Leclerc, with Hamilton, Sainz and Albon completing the top five, all of whom had yet to stop. Red Bull endured further pit problems with Tsunoda, with the squad’s light system not working – meaning that the drivers were not seeing the green light to signal that they could go.

On Lap 15, race leader Piastri had better luck in the pits after making a smooth stop for the medium tyres, bringing him back out into third. This put the top 10 order as Leclerc, Hamilton, Piastri, Russell, Albon, Norris, Gasly, Alonso, Ocon and Verstappen, with Albon and Alonso not having stopped along with the Ferrari pair.

The Williams and Aston Martin both soon pitted for the hard and medium compound respectively – before Leclerc and Hamilton followed on Lap 18 to double stack for the mediums, despite Leclerc seemingly suggesting that he wanted to do a one-stop strategy. The Monegasque returned to the track in fourth, with Hamilton in 11th.